T

he Home Ministry has ordered every public cemetery administrator in the country to regularly report data on deaths to improve poor civil registration data that has led to inefficiencies in public service delivery.

'€œThe ministry has informed every regional head in the country of the policy, so that they can implement it this year,'€ Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, the ministry'€™s population and civil registration director general, said on Monday.

On March 17, the ministry issued a circular to every regional head stating that every public cemetery administrator must process death registries. These registries consist of, among other things, the citizenship identity number (NIK) of the deceased, the place and date of death, and the name of the person who reported the death to the cemetery.

Each agency head at the regency and mayoralty level is obliged to report each month the death registry to provincial cemetery agency heads. The latter then report the data to the director general of the population and civil registration office.

Zudan said that the policy was aimed at improving data on population, which will serve as the basis for the potential voter list (DP4) in future elections.

'€œFixing the data of deaths is our top priority this year, since the The General Election Commission uses the DP4 as its basis to create the preliminary eligible voter list [DPS] and than confirm it in the final voter list [DPT],'€ Zudan said.

Anny, the ministry'€™s acting director of civil registration, said that very often elections in the country were tainted by the inclusion of dead people in the DPT.

'€œThis happens because the neighborhood group [RT] and community unit [RW] heads rarely convey the data to subdistrict heads, who must report the data to the cemetery agency at the regency level,'€ she told The Jakarta Post.

Anny also said the inclusion of dead people in data on population often lead to the misuse of social assistance for the poor. '€œPeople often outsmart social agency offices, which are responsible for giving out the assistance,'€ Anny said.

Under the 2014 law on citizenship and administration, the government is obliged to proactively gather data on citizens, including data on births, migration and death.

'€œThe public is not familiar with the new system. Before the 2014 law, it was the resident who was obliged to report any change to the data,'€ Anny said.

The budget for the new policy will be allocated from the annual budgets of the various regions, Anny said. '€œEvery region has a different standard for using its budget. The budget for the death registry depends on the number of deaths in every region,'€ Anny explained.

Zudan said he hoped that the policy would alert the public about the importance of death certificates. '€œThe low number of recorded death certificates is primarily caused by the public'€™s unawareness of the need for the certificate,'€ Zudan said.

A number of regions, such as Ambon in Maluku, and Depok and Bandung in West Java, have incentivized families to report deaths.